When I was younger I didn't back away from them, and I was a rather aggressive individual. I never went out specifically looking for a fight and often I'd try to just not let it happen, but my smart ass commentary usually didn't allow for much success. I am a jack ass, which is probably apparent if you follow some of my posts on here. I enjoy playing devil's advocate quite a bit, though I don't think that has really caused my physical fights. I have often been the guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, and at the time (not that it is any different now) I was fighting frequently I certainly wasn't an intimidating physical presence. There are a few instances where I did things that I feel caused me to deserve a solid beating, but that was pretty rare.

I'm just glad that my fighting days are all behind me. Maturation can be a wonderful thing.

i have only been perhaps in one non-political street fight and i will do everything in my power not to ever have to have one again, i'll run away and use all tactics possible to avoid such futile risks. Political, like confronting neo-nazis or something similar, thats a different story and those will probably pop up every now and again and running away is not always an option.

At one point I remember friends of mine taking the piss out of me, saying I must have a sign on my head inviting fights. Sometimes I have got into fights that a man would never be involved in, because I was only picked on for being female. Thing being, I didn't respond like a normal female. If a group of stupid builders started yelling obscenities at me I would say things like "come back when your balls have dropped."

Sometimes rudeness and laughter works wonders. One time when I and a friend were walking back from school (we were about fourteen) this orrible bloke exposed himself to us. He had been scaring a few of the girls in our year. We on the other hand fell around laughing at his wrinkled didgum, asking him if he had taken it to the doctor, and was it meant to look like that.

On the other hand, sometimes brute force can help. One time a young lad (I think about fourteen, funnily enough) rode past me on his way to the local grammar school on his bike, and grabbed me by the breast when I was expecting Séamus. (I suppose they were pretty tremendous at the time.) He took me by surprise, so there wasn't time to react. Later that day however, he and his friends walked up, knocking into me and laughing. I picked up the boob grabber and casually tossed him over some railings. I only realised later that the railings were over six foot high, and he couldn't get out. As you can imagine, the friends left me alone after that, though they did laugh their socks off at booby boy while he was running around on the other side of the fence, chased by an irate gardener.

[quote="sensless"]Most fights can be finished with one punch, make sure it is you delivering it.

Many people don't know how to punch.

So very, very true.

Many people watch Fight Club or some other Hollywood movie and consider that typical of a real fight...

Watch a real boxer fight - they punch in a kangaroo-type motion rarely bringing their arms back past their shoulder. This ensures they maintain a good defence and have the right body posture (particularly leg and hip movements) to get some decent power.

Furthermore, forget what you see in movies like Snatch where Brad Pitt takes a pile of bare-knuckle punches and keeps going. One SINGLE punch like that in a street fight will most likely KO most people.

Uh huh. Well one arm pushups off your knees are good for throwing hard and fast straight rights. I've held my own against a couple of state toughman champs in boxing but have never been in a street fight.

[b]Fighting Myths - “Don’t fight back or the attacker will become more enraged and hurt you worse.”[/b]

It is amazing that various self-defense instructors and other “experts” in the field are still spreading this myth. Yet every month I hear of cases of people being told this. Probably well meant but horribly misguided, this strong myth has led to many disastrous incidents.

Although Law Enforcement agencies have taken the “don’t fight back” stance in the past, they now have done a complete reversal of mindset. Current evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of fighting back. So why is this myth still so often prescribed? My theory is that past inadequate training, poor socialization of women, and “good ole boy” mentality historically conditioned women to play the consummate victim. With all this conditioning to fight against, women in general were typically not empowered to fight back. In fact to the contrary, women were taught to be “nice” and “not make a scene”.

Thus there were most likely many incidents where women made half-hearted frail attempts to resist, which may have lead to greater severity in the attacks, causing law enforcement agencies to take the “no fight” stance. The difficulty increases when you add the statistic that approximately 75% of assaults on women are committed by someone they know.

It’s one thing to deal with an attack in a dark alley when it’s very clearly an assault. It’s a whole other thing when it’s someone the victim knows, maybe even likes, respects, or even loves. The role of “caretaker” for which women are so famous and which we men are so grateful, further inhibits taking strong action in self-defense. Then there is what I refer to as the “good ole boy” network that is invested in preventing women from being strong and empowered. Although slowly changing, this network is still unfortunately very alive and well.

From Law Enforcement agents to politicians, executives to teachers, this fear-based mentality continues to exist and proliferate the victimization of women. Recently I heard of a High School gym teacher who told female students to just “relax” and “take it” if attacked. His advice was that they should carry condoms to have their attacker “cooperatively” wear while raping them. Incidentally, this golden pearl of wisdom was made in the presence of the boys in the class.

So much for the education of our youth.

People flock to Karate schools to learn self-defense. Lacking adrenal stress conditioning skills, instructors taught the same old traditional methods that were learned from their instructors. Much of this was useless in real situations. I personally struggled with this for years, training in Karate while at night I would experience real fights where my Karate skills helped very little. Yet to be fair we had no other paradigm to work from until the fairly recent advent of FAST Defense Training.

Yet even against all these odds, fighting back was often successful. The vast majority of attackers are disempowered individuals looking for a sense of control or power in their lives. They are looking for a victim and do not want or expect a fight. When the alleged “victim” does not respond accordingly, most assailants will back off.

Are there times when a victim should choose not to fight back? Not many, but sometimes Yes. When the alleged victim feels that they have a better chance of surviving if they acquiesce than if they do not. These cases are rare. Such a case may be an armed gang attack where the odds of successful defense are almost impossible. Or perhaps to save a loved one. But the operative word is that the person should “choose” to submit, or “choose” to fight back. No matter what the end result, FAST Defense Training arms a person with many new choices and the power to act on those choices. And even if they choose to cooperate, their mental and emotional states are better than if they were simply victims, since they still have exercised their power of choice.

In the 3 years ive taken brazilain Jiu Jitsu there is one very important thing I have learned. If the person you are fighting is unexperienced on the ground and you are, almost totally regardless of their fighting/ martial arts experience you will win the fight. I have seen novice students of BJJ (6 months - 5 years) take on people with much higher levels of experience in different martial arts ( whatever they may be) and win the fight without barely even breaking a sweat. Whats the reasoning behind this????
Well I believe it is because unless you train specifically on the ground you feel as if it is the last place you want to be in a fight. Now understand I am not disregarding other forms of martial arts whatsoever. I believe the best fighter is a well rounded one. But I think BJJ should be essential to anyones training experience regardless of what other martial arts they have trained in.

" Vivisectionists dragged into the street and shot as flames engulf the laboratory. Justice's hammer falls again and again until it ends when the price is a helpless animal's life." Earth Crisis

[quote="Dunc"][quote="daviddenton"]...so, if your art doesn't prepare you for a confrontation with mutliple attackers, find a new one...

So southern tiger does prepare you for multiple attackers? Somebody's been watching to many Bruce Lee movies I thinks

Lol I trained in Fu Jow Pai, and Lau Gar before that, and I don't see how the argument can be made that a TMA would stand up against multiple attackers anymore than any MMA or grappling art might...

Sorry this is a critical first post but I had to say something lol

LOL - agreed.

No single martial art can comprehensively prepare you in my opinion. Anyone who believes otherwise is deluded (like you said, most likely from too many Bruce Lee flicks).

If you look at the worlds top fighters (Fedor Emelianenko, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Wanderlai Silva, BJ Penn, etc) they all cross train heavily. All of them can grapple, punch, kick, submit, etc. No fancy flying kicks that kill 8 opponents armed with bazooka's at once... just outstanding all-round fighters well versed in all aspects of reality fighting.

Ultimately even these guys are fucked if confronted with heavily armed opponents though...

[quote="daviddenton"]i guess some people have not been exposed to the brutal art of silat. that is most unfortunate....well, unfortunate for you that is.... ~david

I often think of how brutal and simple Silat is when training it.. many of the moves when performed on someone who is not expecting them will end a fight very quickly. I just trained Silat for about 6 hours a couple Saturday's ago with Sifu Cass Magda, who trains under Dan Inosanto.. pretty fun stuff